Oracle release ESP1 for UPK 12

Oracle have released Enablement Service Pack 1 for User Productivity Kit 12.1 (bringing the most recent level to 12.1.0.1). In addition to the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements, this includes the following additional features:

  • Topics can be ‘published’ to ‘movie’ format. Technically this achieved by publishing to See It! mode,m and then running a separate utility that will play this and record it, before saving as a .MP4 file.
  • It is possible to assign multiple Questions to an Assessment and then specify the total number of questions that should be presented to the user when they take the assessment. The questions are chosen at random at the time the Assessment is taken, reducing the probability of a user seeing the same Assessment twice in a row.
  • If Knowledge Center is being used, then the results of Test It! mode can be saved to KC. They cannot be saved elsewhere.

Oracle release UPK 12.1

Oracle have officially released User Productivity Kit 12.1 (12.0 was never released – the previous release was 11.1). This introduces some interesting changes:

  • Print Areas can be defined for thumbnail images in printed documents (previously the Action Area was used).
  • It is possible to define image overlays for all or selected screenshots within a Topic (for example, to place a watermark or on screenshots or to mask out information). This is non-destructive and can be removed.
  • Customization of the Player appearance is now much easier through the use of Skins.
  • Web Pages have been enhanced to allow much more control over formatting – including nested lists and tables.
  • Style Sheets can be defined to control the format of Web Pages (similar to CSS).
  • Topics can be viewed directly from the Library, without having to be included in an Outline Element.
  • A new Pane called Derived From is available to determine which documents have been created by copying other elements.
  • It is now possible to search for Topics based on the captured Context.
  • Plus additional changes.

I guess I’ll need to write an updated version of my book…